What do you feel are the best 2 or 3 systems to get listings?

Good to hear about your new association with AgentGenius. We all need your stuff.

We can’t afford a Radio or TV marketing campaign, so I would appreciate your thoughts on…

Other than Radio/TV, what do you feel are the best 2 or 3 systems to get listings?

Other than marketing my listings, what is the next most effective method of attracting buyers?

Thanks for your help.

Raymond

Good news, it is a short list. There are precisely two ways to get business: marketing or prospecting. All methods of getting business fall into one of those two categories. If the question on how to get business includes, "We can’t afford….." then for now skip the marketing part. Prospecting is your answer.

Prospect for listings. Buyers are almost never "looking for an agent", they are looking for a house. So, prospect for listings. Emulate top agents. Almost all long-term top agents are listers. To get a closed escrow you must first have an open escrow. To get an open escrow you’ll need a listing. To get a salable listing you will have to have gone on several listing appointments. To get a listing appointment you will have to have leads.

Therefore, you are in the lead generation business. Full time. If you are going to succeed that is the business you are in all the time. You are not in any other business. Just getting leads. Get enough leads and you don’t really have "unsolvable problems" in your business. Don’t get enough leads and all you have are "unsolvable problems". Your main dollar productive activity is getting leads. Time spent working on getting leads is time well spent. Invested, if you will. Time spent on most other stuff is quite possibly wasted time.

There can be a real charm to deliberate nonsense. It can raise a person’s tone and get them out of a bad mood – it can do a lot of good things, it can change lives for the better. Laughing, joking, having fun, creating and spreading a "spirit of play" can be one of the most joyous experiences in life. Do it often. But if not knowingly and causatively "playing" please don’t pretend that the mindless time wasting activities that most real estate agents spend their days working on are productive. Are you causatively playing? Cool. Otherwise, if you don’t physically have a buyer to show a house to or are in the process of physically writing a contract, or on your way to see someone to do just that or to take a listing – prospect. Get leads. Get more leads. The number of leads that you actually need is far far more than you even think it is – you need more than that. Lots more. Work on that.

I found the following here: You don’t need a life plan. You don’t need motivation, self-confidence, peer support or even luck. All you need is the willingness to take the next most obvious step—then repeat the process again and again, regardless of how you feel. Try it. Happiness comes from seeing the results of your efforts. You don’t need it before you start.

In response to your question, "Other than marketing my listings, what is the next most effective method of attracting buyers?" My answer? Market someone else’s listings. This is what is done with an IDX search. If you want more to market via the various listing propagation sites, borrow them. Ask other agents if you can advertise their listings. Buyers are looking for houses. Get lots of houses on those various sites. Hundreds is the correct order of magnitude.

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Something I am just delighted to be able to announce is that the Realtor Success Series is finally compiled and there for anyone to see and use. Even I personally had no idea I already had that much content available. I hope you like it. More to come.

Teach Me Something There has been a lot of reference to how much can be learned if practitioners were to read industry blogs. However recently I've noticed that the RE.net has put more emphases on who's blog is bigger...oops, I mean better. There is seemingly more in-fighting than valuable information…

Jeremy Hart, REALTOR in Blacksburg, Virginia is the newest addition to AG- please welcome him in the comments! Many AG contributors are already friends with Jeremy- he is active on Twitter, LinkedIn and has a strong presence in many of the social media arenas. For those who don't, Jeremy is…

Russell has been an Associate Broker with John Hall & Associates since 1978 and ranks in the top 1% of all agents in the U.S. Most recently The Wall Street Journal recognized the Top 200 Agents in America, awarding Russell # 25 for number of units sold. Russell has been featured in many books such as, "The Billion Dollar Agent" by Steve Kantor and "The Millionaire Real Estate Agent" by Gary Keller and has often been a featured speaker for national conventions and routinely speaks at various state and local association conventions. Visit him also at nohasslelisting.com and number1homeagent.com.

12 Comments

( May 12, 2008 )

Oh, so true! Get enough leads, and you won’t have any time to waste anymore, I guarantee. Do it well enough, and you’ll get to the point you can’t even work all the leads, then you bring in another agent to work the ones you can’t, then another, and another. Next thing you know, you’re making money from their efforts, and you can spend THAT money on marketing!

( May 12, 2008 )

Hi Russell! I have to tell you that lead generation is absolutely a must in our business, but being able to capture leads and turn those into clients becomes an art (I know it sounds far fetched), but I know plenty of agents that are great at capturing and converting and others that are not so great.

( May 12, 2008 )

( May 12, 2008 )

( May 12, 2008 )

One of these days folks are gonna realize how truly simple your operation is. Of course that’s the genius of it, (unforgivable pun intended) you’ve simplified your system to the point of bullet proof success.

( May 14, 2008 )

Well said Russell. It is a lead generation business– I suppose every service business is. The more leads, the more chances to convert into clients. You can either (a) buy leads (eg. HomeGain) or (b) use your own creativity and ingenuity to get them (eg. referrals). I was surprised to learn that when (b) fails to produce enough leads, agents have turned to (a), with success.

To Ines’ great point about conversion being an art: One must also consider that converting internet leads may not be the same as converting others.